Hebrew Word Study – Aged Memory – Gimel  גמל Gimmel Mem Lamed

Psalms 103:2: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his 

Fall on your knees – English

Caer de rodillas – Spanish

Spadnie na kolana – Polish

Dao zai ni de xigai (I think) Chinese

Cadere in ginocchio – Italian

Taqae ealaa rukbatayk – Arabic

Cadent hostem supplex – Latin

We are approaching the Christmas season and today and I started to think about the next few weeks when the Christmas decorations go up and I will start trucking people to the North Riverside Mall to do some Christmas shopping.  in my disability bus, my first run was jammed packed as I was taking shoppers to the North Riverside Mall for some sort of shopping spree. I thought about a prior pilgrimage during the Christmas season when I carried a colorful array of passengers. The first woman on my bus was Emily. She is Chinese but we call her Emily because we cannot pronounce her real name.  It sounds like Emily so we get away with it.   The next person I picked up was Betty whose parents came from Poland and she claims she will speak Polish sometimes only as a way to memorialize her parents who are now gone.  Then there was good old Rosa who speaks excellent English but I rarely hear it.  She is proud of her heritage and speaks Spanish as much as she can get away with.  Of course, we can’t forget Ralph who is in wheelchair and was born in Italy.  He claims he speaks good English but the only words I recognize are S—of—B—ch S—t.  I think it is a universal language.  To be sure I must not forget Ricardo who claims to be Muslim but says he loves Jesus. If there is such a thing as a Catholic Muslim that is Ricardo.  He speaks fluent Arabic. 

 

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So I am traveling down Cermak Avenue with my happy shoppers all tightly knitted together in close fellowship and I have the radio tuned into 93.9 FM which you Chicagoans will recognize as the 24 hours Christmas music radio station.  On comes Feliz Navidad  and of course, Rosa has to start singing along in her totally off-key voice.  Before long the others join in, probably to drown her out.   So, we have this happy band of travelers singing along with Christmas joy.  After that song ended the next song was Celine Dion’s version of O Holy Night.  You know that song, that is the one with the spine-tingling Fall on your knees where, when you get to that part you really come on with it.   I remember attending a function one year where everyone was singing Christmas Carols and when they got to O Holy Night it seems the only words they knew were Fall on your knees.  They had to go to their smartphones to look it up. I found some even mistakenly took the title of the song to be Fall on your knees. But when they found it on their smartphones they started to sing it with true gusto. It was a little weak at first but when they hit Fall on your knees I mean the rafters shook as the old Pentecostals used to say.  Another time I attended a Spanish church where, for the most part, the service was in English. They also sang Fall on Your Knees uh, I mean, O Holy Night.  When they got to the  Fall on your knees part, they proved to be true Pentecostals.  Although, I noticed many of them were saying Caer de rodillas.  I guess sometimes you can express your heart better when you sing in your own native language.

Well, when O Holy Night came on over the radio in my disability bus, old Rosa started to sing along only she was singing in Spanish. Not to be outdone Emily started to sing the song in Chinese, Betty was singing it in her sentimental Polish and even Ralph started to sing it in Italian, at least I hope that was what he was singing.  Suddenly Ricardo joined in with his Arabic and when they reached Fall on your knees Celine Dion was the only one singing in English.  Everyone else sang Fall on your knees in their own language.  I chose Latin as I was the only non-Catholic on the bus (Ricardo claiming to be half Catholic which is as likely as half a pregnancy).  I just felt sorry that Latin as a ceremonial language was so quickly abandoned by these fine Catholics.

I guarantee no one has ever heard Fall on your knees sung like it was sung on my bus. It was absolute chaos and yet so beautiful.  Everyone was filled with real Christmas joy or maybe it was the joy of the Lord.  You see, today was a downer for me and as I trudged off to my disability bus I prayed and ask God if He could do something to evoke some joy in me. Well, He did and it seems I was taking a trip down memory lane as I discovered my assignment was to take a group of people to the Mall. Everyone was just excited.  It was a beautiful fall day filled with anticipation. As we journeyed to the mall the memory of the Holiday trip came flooding back and when we arrived at North Riverside Mall and I was filled with the joy of the Lord. 

I do need to tell you about a Jewish couple on my bus that I thought about during this time. Last Christmas season they rode my bus. They are brother and sister and when they got off the bus they handed me a Christmas present, a box filled with all sorts of chocolate, and diabetic decadences and they gave me a chag molad samea’h (Merry Christmas in Hebrew).  Usually, I just get a chag samea’h from my Jewish friends (happy holiday). 

I had a few minutes of downtime when I dropped my party off at the mall so I parked in the parking lot, went to the back of my bus, and fell on my knees. As I said, the day started off as a real downer, I have been recovering from a virus and was really out of sorts. I realized that God does not just bring a happy moment into our lives and then it is over.  A whole year can pass and He will bring it to memory again to experience the same pleasure. Even if the experience was out of season.  I mean it is Halloween, not Christmas.  Yet, during that low time, God brought an old memory back and I felt that same joy all over again.  

David was having a real downer of a day and he took charge of his soul in Psalms 103:2 and commanded it to not forget God’s benefits.  When I think of benefits I think of little extras, an abundance in something. It is that but the word in Hebrew is much more revealing. The word in Hebrew comes from the root word gimel which means to mature, to age. Like cheese, it gets better when it is aged. I believe David was speaking of memories that God gives us and then when he has a need we command our soul to remember God’s little extras and we savor that memory as it is sweeter the older it gets. 

 

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